The Terror of Awakening

The terror of taking back our own voice. It is in those words that the mystic, herbalist, and medicine women Hildegard of Bingen describe the process of awakening. Terror.



Indeed we often think of the blessings discovering layers by layers who we truly are brings. Yet we often forget that the path can be immensely difficult.

Anyone that has tried to shed the deepest layer of cultural conditioning knows that. Anyone who has ventured into feeling and acknowledging its own privilege knows that. Anyone who has achieved to break a family karma dynamic knows that. Anyone who had to let go of an ego built on social status and corporate achievements knows that. Anyone who has deeply looked into where the behavioral patterns in their love life come from knows that.

I am definitely still a beginner on those roads. And keep a humble student heart. Learning again and again.

There is a silver lining to all those sheddings. And a golden reflection to them all. A potential for self-awareness, or consciousness, that provides a clear view into the self. A view that is not comfortable or blissful until the layers of ignorance are pulled away.

Long periods of solitude, errance, grief, dépression, séparation, confusion, terror, anger, will pave the road. And yet that calling, the deeper calling, to reveal the self will keep inviting us to deeper inquiries, bigger questions, broader wild territories of unknowingness.

The learning to listen, to our bodies first and foremost so we can listen to the collective bodies. And to the Earth. Learning to use our own voice from that place of listening and not from a place of fear, trauma, shadows, and ego. Learning to finally see a light inside that is not about self-pleasing but about transcendence. Those many steps to recall again and again our deeper truth.

For me, that is what this red road is about, this shamanic path, the ancient teachings, the wisdom of nature and native people. A return to something so profound and yet so simple that it will pierce often very painfully through all layers of falseness like a sword of light. Like a sharp arrow. Like a prayer.

Angell Deer